Coca-Cola trims SMB; RP-Hapee falls

ANTIPOLO – Ranged against a sister team in the league for the first time, Coca-Cola didn’t care being disrespectful at all, coming out in a fighting mood to embarrass San Miguel Beer, 85-79, in the Samsung PBA Governors Cup at the Yñares Sports Center here last night.

The Tigers played heads up game all night and bounced back from an 82-90 loss to the Shell Turbo Chargers last Sunday to improve their record to 2-1 (win-loss).

Rossel Ellis was in his usual scrappy self while Fred Williams was a notch better than his previous performances as they terribly outplayed Lamont Strothers and Keith Hill, leading the Tigers to their second win following their 66-62 victory over the FedEx Express in the league inaugurals.

"What was written on our board before the game was incremental improvement. We’re looking for improvement in our game. The first part of our program for this team was playing hard. We’re now on the second part which is to play better," said Coca-Cola coach Chot Reyes.

"But we got a big break in this game, with San Miguel deciding to put Mario Bennett in good physical condition before letting him play his first game in the league. We prepared ourselves against Bennett. Noong si Keith Hill ang lumaro, naging mas madali sa amin ang game," Reyes added. "I have a pretty good inkling of how Bennett plays. I have watched him play live. Magaling."

The San Miguel management decided to play Hill for one more game last night with Bennett, an NBA veteran with stints with the Los Angeles Lakers and the Chicago Bulls, proving to be a bit out of shape in practice Thursday.

The Beermen gambled on Hill but paid dearly for it as the homeward-bound import fared even worse than his first game. Drawing only one point and the same number of rebound from Hill in the first half, acting San Miguel coach Siot Tanquincen opted to keep the import on the bench in the final 20 minutes of play.

Focusing their defense on Strothers in the final half, the Tigers stretched their nine-point halftime lead, 42-33, to as many as 15, 55-40, and were hardly threatened until the end.

A day after the Selecta Philippine team made a good impression despite a loss to Alaska Milk, the other half of the national training pool did the other way arond in a 62-95 blowout by Talk N Text in the second game.

The Phone Pals ran the breaks with great precision and put tremendous pressure on the national hopefuls on defense in a big turnaround from an 89-92 defeat at the hands of Purefoods last Saturday.